Baby Blues
by Checkerboards
Summary: Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration, don't fail me now!


Edward Nygma was having a wonderful day. The springtime sun shone down on him in his carefully non-question-marked clothes as he went about the handful of errands that had to be done. A double armload of his suits had been dropped off at the dry cleaners' building that may or may not have been a semi-functional Mafia front, a few coded letters had been deposited in the mail box, and he'd even found the time to pick up some delicious-smelling Mexican takeout on his way back home.

Yes, all in all, it had been a lovely day - that is, until the traffic cop had recognized him. So now here he was, racing through the streets, policemen in hot pursuit of him -_ again_ - while hot grease leaked through the bag and burned his hands. He ripped the bag open, tossed the contents over his shoulder and was rewarded with a howling shriek of disgust as an enormous bean burrito unwound itself and splatted neatly on the cop's face.

Across the street, a woman ducked out of her minivan and rushed into her apartment building. She hadn't bothered to take the keys out or even turn off the engine. She may as well have put a huge neon sign on top of her car that read "STEAL ME". Eddie veered across the street, threw himself into the driver's seat and accelerated away. As the burrito-covered cop receded into the distance, he allowed himself a sigh of relief.

"Mommy?"

Eddie twisted around and peered into the backseat. A child gazed levelly back at him, strapped firmly into a cow-printed car seat. "Where's Mommy?" the child demanded.

The Riddler's sigh of relief turned into a groan of dismay. Nothing drew the cops like a stolen kid, and with a policeman right there to call it in, the cops would be all over him like wolves on a dead elk. Could he ditch the car? No, not with all the parking spaces filled up. He could just leave the van in the middle of the road, but that would draw even more attention to himself. Maybe he'd get lucky and find somewhere to hide before the cops caught up with him again.

Before he'd even gone half a mile his rearview mirror was filled with a double set of spinning lights. Well, he'd never outrun his four new followers on foot. He'd just have to stay in the car and hope for the best.

"You're not my mommy," the child informed him.

"No, I'm not," Eddie said, skidding through a red light as a taxi nearly t-boned him.

The child was silent for a moment, thinking about the situation. "I'm hungry."

"That's nice," Eddie said absently, biting back a curse as he saw another two cop cars swing into pursuit.

"I want my crackers."

"No."

"I want my crackers. I want my crackers. I _want_ my _crackers_," the child chanted.

The Riddler rummaged blindly in the enormous floral-print diaper bag on the passenger seat, eyes darting between the rearview mirror filled with flashing lights and the road ahead full of slow-moving cars. "Okay! Here! Fine!" He jammed an arm into the backseat, holding out a small dinosaur-shaped clear tupperware container full of animal crackers. The child snatched it from his hands and settled it in its lap, happily devouring the treat.

The Riddler turned his attention back to the road. If he took the expressway, maybe he could get out to the suburbs and lose the cops in a subdivision somewhere. He yanked the van onto the on-ramp and powered past the other vehicles to the tune of a dozen discordantly blatting car horns.

"I'm thirsty."

Eddie glanced in the rearview mirror. He hadn't seen so many police cars since that time that his escape route had accidentally dovetailed with the Joker's.

"I'm_ thirsty_." Tiny feet drummed on the back of his seat. "I want my drink!"

"Just eat your crackers!" Eddie yelped, swerving the van out of the way of a police car trying the old bumper-tap move on him.

"No! I want my DRINK!" the child howled. The dinosaur-shaped tupperware container impacted on the back of the Riddler's head, sending animal crackers flying everywhere.

The Riddler jammed his arm into the diaper bag again, haphazardly screeching around a school bus full of cheerleaders. There was a sippy cup there, half-full of water. He tossed it into the backseat. "Here. Just…_here_. Now be quiet!"

Silence reigned in the car for a few sweet minutes, broken only by the frantic wailing of the police sirens behind them.

"Can I have a show?"

"A what?"

"Can I have a show? Please?" the child asked, remembering the manners that had been recently and patiently drilled into it.

The Riddler took a quick look at the van's control panel. It had more buttons than the Batmobile. One of them might have operated a DVD player, but who knew?

He slapped a button by a disc-sized slot. A CD whirred in the drive as a chorus of out-of-tune children began butchering a selection of classic nursery songs. He wrenched it back off.

"I want a shoooooooooow," the child wailed.

"Here! Music!"

The CD spun back to life. "_The prettiest wing that you ever did see_-"

"I want a show!"

"You can't have one!"

"But I _want it_!"

"SHUT UP! JUST SHUT UP!" Eddie screamed, rocketing around a caravan of antique cars.

The child began to cry, a shrill, shrieking set of sobs that were far worse than any noise it had previously made. His seat rocked under the impact of angry little feet.

"…_feather on a wing and a wing on a bird and a bird in a nest and a nest in a tree and a tree in a_-"

The Riddler clutched the steering wheel, white-knuckled, and glared ahead. A migraine was swelling up behind his eyes. There - the Gotham River. If he could make it across the bridge -

The bridge was rising.

He glanced behind him. An armada of cops filled the rear windshield.

There really was no choice. He stomped hard on the gas pedal. The minivan, already shuddering from its unaccustomed speed, began to seriously jerk side to side as Eddie steered it up the rapidly raising incline of the bridge. It accelerated off the edge of the bridge and soared through the air like an extremely badly-designed hawk, landing with a crunching thud of metal and squealing rubber on the other side.

When the bridge was lowered, the police raced over to find the minivan abandoned by the side of the road. Footprints, deeply trodden into the squelchy mud of the riverbank, marked the Riddler's flight path to a safer, more child-free part of town.

The child in the backseat kicked happy feet as its tearfully joyful mother scooped it out of the car seat. "I want to do it again!"

_Author's Note: Costuming plays is fun. Spent yesterday making bowties and designing a pattern for spats and cummerbunds and singing and dancing and panicking. No time to write. Can't stop talking like Rorschach. Reposting from tumblr. Sorry. New stuff next week if head does not explode. _


End file.
